The MENA Hub Launch Checklist: What to Prepare Before Submission Day

Open MENA Hub's launch wizard cold, on the morning you meant to go live, and you will hit a wall before you reach the submit button. The final step won't let you launch until eight fields are filled in — your product's name, a tagline, a working website, a country, a description of at least twenty characters, one to three categories, a logo and at least two gallery images. Four more fields are marked recommended rather than required, which is exactly where most under-prepared launches quietly fall short: a demo video, a maker credit, a shout-out to a tool you built on, a first comment.

None of that is a reason to be annoyed at the form. It's a reason to do the preparation the day before, not the hour of. This is a checklist for that preparation: your profile, your assets, your category choices, your timing, and what actually happens once you hand the product to a reviewer.

Key Takeaways

• MENA Hub's launch wizard blocks submission until eight fields are complete — name, tagline, live website, country, a 20+ character description, one to three categories, a logo, and at least two gallery images (max eight).
• Product Hunt's own posting guidance specifies exact image dimensions worth matching even off-platform: gallery shots at 1270×760 pixels and a square 240×240 thumbnail, because those are the proportions launch audiences are already used to scanning.
• A product page is only as credible as the profile behind it. Product Hunt's own guidance tells makers to "add the makers by their Product Hunt username so they can join the conversation." An empty bio or missing avatar undercuts that credit before anyone reads your description.
• Categories are a taxonomy, not decoration: they're meant to "help users discover your product by searching for a specific problem they want to solve," and both Product Hunt and MENA Hub cap the selection at three.
• Timing has a measurable cost. Product Hunt itself reports that "products launched on the weekend get 15% more 'Visit' button clicks than those on weekdays," which is the kind of trade-off worth deciding on purpose rather than by accident.
• Review on MENA Hub isn't automated. An admin reads the same fields visible in the queue and either approves the launch or rejects it with a written reason that lands in your inbox — and a rejected product simply returns to your dashboard to be fixed and resubmitted.

What "ready to submit" actually means here

Before touching the form, it helps to know what it's checking for, because the wizard shows you a live checklist on its final step rather than a surprise error after you click launch.

Required, and it will block you without these:

• Product name
• English tagline
• A live website URL
• Country
• A description of at least 20 characters
• At least one category (up to three)
• A logo
• At least two gallery images (up to eight)

Recommended, and skippable, but visibly incomplete if you skip them:

• A demo video
• At least one shout-out to a tool, API or service you built with
• At least one credited maker besides yourself
• A first comment

Notice what isn't on either list: an Arabic tagline and description are both fields in the form, but neither is required. That's worth a deliberate decision rather than an oversight, on a platform whose audience spans both languages. The companion piece on writing launch descriptions covers how to write the tagline and description themselves; this checklist is about having the fields ready to fill in.

Set up your profile before you touch the launch form

Product Hunt's own posting guidance tells makers to "add the makers by their Product Hunt username so they can join the conversation" — the same logic applies here. Every maker you add to a MENA Hub launch shows up as a linked profile next to your product, and a thin one undercuts the launch before anyone reads the description.

Before you open the launch wizard, go to your account settings and fill in: username and display name, a real avatar rather than the default placeholder, country and city, a bio in both English and Arabic (leaving the Arabic one blank is a visible gap on a bilingual platform, not a neutral default), and a website or social link a visitor can use to verify who you are.

If your product belongs to a broader company rather than a single side project, MENA Hub also lets you create a startup profile — name, founding year, HQ city and country, industry, funding stage and headcount range — and attach your launch to it from the wizard's final step. It's optional and skippable for a solo indie launch, but worth setting up ahead of time if you're launching on behalf of a company, since it's one more piece of context both a reviewer and a visitor see before deciding whether to trust the page.

The assets that make or break the scan

This is the step most founders under-budget time for, because it looks like an upload task rather than a writing task. It isn't — a screenshot chosen at the last minute is the single most visible thing on your product page, visited before the tagline is even fully read.

Logo. One square image. Product Hunt's own spec is a useful default even off-platform: 240×240 pixels, under 3MB. A logo that's legible at that size on a phone screen is legible everywhere larger.

Gallery. MENA Hub requires at least two images and allows up to eight. What goes in them matters more than the count: real screenshots of your product, not a mockup in a device frame or a slide of marketing copy with no interface visible. If you're short on finished screens, that's what the "beta" and "unreleased" availability options in the basics step are for — say so rather than dressing up placeholder UI. For sizing, Product Hunt's own 1270×760-pixel recommendation is a safe, tested proportion if you don't already have a house standard.

Video. Optional on MENA Hub, but worth taking seriously: Product Hunt reports that roughly 53% of its Product of the Day winners since 2021 included a video. A screen recording made with a free tool like Loom beats no video at all, and beats an over-produced one you never finish in time.

Demo link. A separate field from the video, meant for an interactive walkthrough rather than a passive recording — something built with a tool like Arcade or a similarly embeddable product tour, if you have one. It's optional, and only worth the time if your product has a flow that's genuinely more convincing to click through than to watch.

None of this is about the words on the assets — the tagline, the description, the first comment. That's covered in full in the guide to writing launch copy that gets upvotes; this section is only about having the pixels ready before you write a word of copy over them.

Choosing categories that match how people search

MENA Hub caps category selection at three, mirroring Product Hunt's own limit. The reasoning Product Hunt gives for why categories exist at all is worth taking literally rather than treating the field as decoration: categories are "a set taxonomy that helps users discover your product by searching for a specific problem they want to solve." A category is a search term someone else is going to use, not a label that describes how you think about your own product.

That reframing changes how to fill the field out:

• Pick the category a stranger would search under to solve the problem your product solves — not the department it would sit in on your own org chart.
• Use all three slots if three genuinely apply. A product that's discoverable under one relevant category and invisible under two others it also qualifies for is leaving traffic on the table for no reason.
• Don't reach for a broader, more competitive category just because it has more traffic. A product that's the twentieth entry in a broad category is easier to overlook than one that's near the top of a specific, accurately chosen one.

Decide when to launch, then use the scheduler

Timing is a real lever, not a superstition. Product Hunt's own guidance states plainly that "products launched on the weekend get 15% more 'Visit' button clicks than those on weekdays," while also noting that weekday launches see more competition from larger, better-resourced teams. Which trade-off is right for you depends on whether your goal is maximum traffic or a better shot in a quieter field — but it should be a decision, made in advance, not whatever day your assets happened to be ready.

MENA Hub's launch step gives you two options once your checklist is complete: launch immediately, or schedule the launch for a specific date and time up to 30 days out. Scheduling is the more useful default for most founders — it decouples "the wizard is done" from "today is launch day," so you aren't rushing a screenshot just because you finished the form on a Tuesday afternoon. Pick the date deliberately: weigh traffic against competition, account for your own availability to respond to comments once the launch is live, and avoid defaulting to "as soon as possible" out of impatience.

Fill in team, extras and the first comment while you're in the form

A few fields round out the page once the core assets are in place, and they're easy to forget because none of them block submission.

Makers and shout-outs. Credit up to ten collaborators by username, and add up to three shout-outs to tools or APIs you built with — both optional, both making the page read as a real team rather than a single account. Have co-founders' usernames ready before you sit down, rather than leaving the field for later.

Funding and promo. Disclose your funding status — bootstrapped, YC-backed or venture-backed — and, separately, offer a launch promo with a code and expiry date. Neither is required, and an inflated promo you can't honor is worse than none at all.

Investor questions. A small set of optional prompts — the right team, why this idea, competitors, traction — sits in the same step. Draft these in advance rather than in the form itself; "traction" and "competitors" both deserve a considered answer.

First comment. Worth having written before submission day, not during it. What to put in it is covered in full in the companion post on launch copy; the task here is just making sure the field isn't blank at the final step.

What happens after you submit: the review queue

Submitting doesn't publish your product immediately — it moves the launch into a pending-review queue that a MENA Hub admin works through. What they see is exactly what's already on your product page: your logo, name, tagline, live website link, and description, alongside your scheduled date if you chose one.

From there, one of two things happens:

• Approved. Your product goes live immediately if you chose "launch now," or automatically on the date you scheduled. Either way, you get an email confirming it, unless you've opted out of launch-status notifications.
• Rejected. The reviewer writes a short reason, which is emailed to you and shown on your dashboard. Rejection isn't a dead end: the product returns to your dashboard alongside your drafts, reason attached, and you edit and resubmit it through the same wizard.

There's no published rubric beyond what the queue itself displays, which is why the earlier sections of this checklist matter: a working link, an accurate description, real screenshots and a filled-in profile are the entire visible surface a reviewer has to go on.

Common mistakes

Treating the wizard's "recommended" fields as optional in practice. A video, a maker credit and a first comment don't block submission, but their absence is visible to every reviewer and visitor the same way a missing required field would be.

Uploading placeholder screenshots because the real product isn't camera-ready. The "beta" and "unreleased" availability options exist for exactly this situation — use them, rather than dressing up mockups as finished.

Filling in the product's profile and forgetting your own. A maker credit linking to an empty bio and a default avatar reads as an inactive account, however complete the product page is.

Picking every loosely relevant category instead of the ones people actually search under. Three accurate categories beat three broad ones that happen to be technically true.

Submitting the moment the wizard allows it, instead of scheduling. The 30-day scheduling window exists so finishing the form and going live don't have to happen on the same day.

What good looks like

You're ready to submit when each of these is true:

• Your profile — username, display name, avatar, bio in both languages — is filled in, not just your product's.
• All eight required fields pass the wizard's own checklist, and you've made a deliberate choice about the four recommended ones rather than skipping them by default.
• Your gallery holds real product screenshots, not mockups, sized close to a standard proportion like 1270×760.
• Your one to three categories are the ones a stranger would search under to solve the problem your product solves.
• You've picked a launch date on purpose — now or scheduled — rather than by whichever day the form happened to be finished.
• Your first comment is written and saved in the extras step before you reach submission, not planned for after.

Questions founders ask

Do I need both an English and Arabic description to submit?

No — only the English tagline and description are required. But MENA Hub serves a bilingual audience, and a product that submits with only English copy is legible to only part of it. Add the Arabic version before submission rather than as a follow-up edit, since early visitors see whatever's live at that moment.

Can I edit my launch after I submit it?

While it's in the pending-review queue, you're waiting on an admin, not editing. If it's rejected, it returns to your dashboard like an unsent draft, and you can edit any step and resubmit. Once a launch is live, further changes go through your product's own edit page instead.

Should I fill in the investor questions if I'm not fundraising?

Only if you expect to at some point, or if a considered answer to "why this idea" and "who the competitors are" makes the page more convincing to any visitor, not just a VC. They're skippable, and leaving them blank costs nothing in review.

What if none of the existing categories fit my product?

Pick the closest genuine match rather than an unrelated one just to fill three slots. One accurate category outperforms three approximate ones, both for how a reviewer reads the submission and for how a visitor searching by category finds it later.

Prepare it, then submit it

Everything above is preparation, not submission — the goal is to reach the wizard with your profile already complete, your assets already shot and sized, your categories already decided, and your launch date already chosen on purpose. Do that, and the wizard itself takes minutes: it's a form to fill in with answers you already have, not a set of decisions to make under time pressure while a reviewer waits on the other end.